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Conference and meeting of the anti-capitalist left in Strasbourg

Wednesday 8 April 2009

During the recent counter summit to NATO’s 60th anniversary meeting in Strasbourg, a new conference of the European anti-capitalist left was held at the invitation of France’s New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA).

Represented : The “Bloco de Esquerda” from Portugal, “Izquierda Anticapitalista” from the Spanish state, “Sinistra critica” from Italy, “Syriza” and “Antartsia” from Greece, the “Polish Party of Labour”, the “ ISL” and “RSB” from Germany, the “Anti-capitalist left” and “Movement for Socialism” from Switzerland, the “LCR” and “PSL” from Belgium, the “SWP” from Great Britain and the “Socialistiska Partiet” from Sweden.
The “Interventionistische Linke” from Germany, the “Pore” from Spain, the “Socialist Party of England and Wales” and the “Scottish Socialist Party” were unable to participate in the meeting and sent messages of solidarity.

This conference discussed the international situation and the coming European elections. It denounced the fraud of the G20 which claimed to "organise a new world order” and stressed the need to “deconstruct" all the announcements of the great powers and the IMF.

It registered a common approach from the participants on the link uniting the two events of the week: the G20 and the NATO summit, which constitute two of the apparatuses essential to world imperialist domination.

“It is not the peoples who should pay the crisis, it is the capitalists! Taking up the slogan of all the demonstrations, the conference adopted a declaration which stressed the demands and objectives of a “Democratic, ecological, social emergency plan”. Struggle against dismissals, for wage increases, for the defence of public services and social protection, for the harmonisation upwards of social rights, for the eradication of tax havens and the setting up of a unified public finance and banking service under popular control. It has also shown that to really beat the crisis, to define "new regulations”, it is necessary to attack the hard core of capitalism, impose a new division of wealth and make inroads into capitalist ownership.

The conference also surveyed the social resistance to the crisis in each country, from which a contradictory situation emerged: National strike action days in Greece, Portugal, Italy, France, mobilisations of sectors of the trade union movement in Germany, strikes in Great Britain but also acceptance indeed fear of the crisis, where the workers, under the pressure of the employers and the trade union bureaucracy, as at Seat in Spain, vote to accept wage freezes.

The crisis also strengthens nationalist or xenophobic reactions in countries like Italy or Britain.

Finally remembering the policy of the anti-capitalist left, rejecting all support or participation to social liberal coalitions with social democracy or the centre left, all the organisation decided, for the coming European elections, to strengthen their links and participate in common initiatives and meetings. The first meeting of the European anti-capitalist left, where each organisation spoke, was held at Strasbourg with more than 800 persons in attendance!